Polestar 1 flagship coupe priced from $155,000

Polestar made the announcement on Wednesday at the 2018 Beijing auto show where the Polestar 1 is being shown to a Chinese audience for the first time. The car will also be made in China at Polestar's plant under construction in the city of Chengdu. (It's where Polestar parent Volvo also has its own Chinese plants.)

Instead of buying the car outright, interested parties will have the option to acquire a Polestar 1 via subscription, though pricing details for this option will be announced at a later date. Polestar's subscription program will likely be similar to Care by Volvo, which for a fixed monthly fee covers insurance and maintenance costs, and also includes access to a number of services.

Thomas Ingenlath

Polestar will build the Polestar 1 at the rate of only 500 cars per year starting in 2019. The company last month started accepting pre-orders for the car, which require a $2,500 deposit. Polestar boss Thomas Ingenlath said the company has seen a strong initial response but didn't provide numbers.

There are 18 initial launch markets for the Polestar 1. In addition to the United States, Polestar is offering the car in Canada, China, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Portugal, Poland, Italy, Austria, Switzerland and Belgium.

The asking price may seem steep for what is essentially a beefed-up Volvo S90 coupe, but the car should prove extremely rare given its low build numbers. And don't forget that its body and part of its internal structure are made almost entirely of carbon fiber. And then there's the 600-hp powertrain that consists of a supercharged and turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-4 working with an electric motor at each axle. A 34-kilowatt-hour battery will help deliver 93 miles of electric range, the highest of any plug-in hybrid.

The Polestar 1 is very much a flagship for the brand. Polestar's next models will be built in higher numbers and priced much lower. Polestar has confirmed it will follow the Polestar 1 with a Polestar 2 electric sedan arriving in 2019 and a Polestar 3 electric SUV arriving a year or two after that.